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Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Dose of reality
I was flabbergasted by some of the commenters at Fangraphs, complaining about typos. My thought was:
I was trying to find a polite way to tell people to be realistic with a section of the site that is the cherry on top of the Fangraph Stats 7-layer cake, all of which you get free at the company picnic.
I couldn’t do it.
Circle Change however nailed it:
For me, the grammer and spelling don’t matter much. I read right past them. I recall a demonstration at a conference where a paragraph was constructed lacking any punctuation and full of spelling mistakes. everyone could read and comprehend the passage.
The most important thing to me is that the stats and analysis is accurate.
In that regard I think the most important thing an editor could do is just to repeat the question “and why is that?” over and over until the author has dug as deeply as he can.
We ask this site to provide numerous articles, on a daily basis, that are interesting, revealing, analytical … and for free. IMHO, our expectations are far greater than what the site should reasonably be expected to deliver.
The topic has been brought up in other discussions, but peer review might be the way to go, where each article is sent to multiple peers to proof, question, challenge, support, etc. I don’t know how this stuff works logistically, but I can imagine it’s not easy.
I guess I don’t view this site as a professional journal, but more along the lines of an online magazine/blog.
I don’t want Circle’s great post to be lost in the 100+ post thread. So, I’m giving it special highlight. That’s a Straight Arrow post right there.
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